


Don’t You Dare Give Me Bathing Towels

by TheArmedLibrarian



Category: Gintama
Genre: #KondoNeedsARestrainingOrder2020, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Christmas Presents, Established Relationship, GinHiji being super fucking casual with each other, Humor, Idiots in Love, Kagura and Sougo are still rivals even if they're in-laws, M/M, Poor Shinpachi, Romance, but not quite yet, inappropriate slander of brands?, shitty gifts, still boyfriends but about to get married, this is just crack i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArmedLibrarian/pseuds/TheArmedLibrarian
Summary: The Yorozuya and Shinsengumi celebrate Christmas in the most eccentric way possible.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou & Kondou Isao & Okita Sougo, Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki, Kagura & Sakata Gintoki & Shimura Shinpachi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69
Collections: Gintama Mini Secret Santa 2020





	Don’t You Dare Give Me Bathing Towels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pendule](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pendule/gifts).



> This is literally crack y'all, who even thinks of plot like these HAHAHAHAHHA
> 
> Anyways, it's me greeting everyone a Merry christmas! Here is my present to my lovely giftee :) Enjoy reading and happy holidays!!

It’s winter again in Edo, with the usually filthy streets all cleaned up to make way for holiday decorations and that Christmas cheer that comes in the form of way too happy servers and endless _All I Want for Christmas_ song repeats being blasted in every store you walk across, holiday themed products, and capitalism— wait, that’s not quite right. Gintoki didn’t like capitalism all that much, but that didn’t stop him from filling his basket with snacks along with Shinpachi and Kagura because the saleslady advertising goodies said it was 50% off.

He can’t help it if food looks and tastes good.

Well, except one food.

" _Blergh_ , gross! It tastes like fucking grass." Gintoki groaned, sticking his tongue out to wipe the gloop back to its crumpled wrapper. Shinpachi watched with disinterest as the perm head unceremoniously closed the KitKat wrapper and shoved it to Kagura's direction, who shrivelled at the sight of it.

"I'm not eating that and you know it," she muttered darkly.

"Nobody asked you to eat it, geez," Gintoki drawled, wiping the remainder of the melted chocolate in his mouth with the back of his hand, grimacing at the unmitigated horrible earthy grass aftertaste. "You think I'd let you ruin the kotatsu by having you puke all over it?"

"Can we please stop talking about puke right now? I'm eating oranges," Shinpachi sighed, peeling a side of the fruit and popping a piece into his mouth. "It's your own fault you randomly snagged some sweets and hoped for the best."

"No. Definitely KitKat's fault, this one." Gintoki shook his head, slamming his pointing finger on the surface of the kotatsu with emphasis. "I've never seen a company becoming so irresponsible over flavors. I'd rather they just pack it up and give some space for Cadbury on the supermarket shelves than this pile of muck."

" _Stop slandering the company and just don't buy it, then_!" Shinpachi snapped back. 

“Ne, Gin-chan. Are you sure we can eat all the food we bought? What about Toshi? Won’t he personally like... erm—” she picked up a bar of chocolate from the table and waved it around— “Toblerone?”

“You idiot! That Mayora never appreciates chocolate even if you mixed it with his drink. Heck, anything that wasn’t filled with mayonnaise wouldn’t even be accepted in his mouth. He’ll spit it out!” Gintoki nodded sagely to himself. “He’s like Gordon Ramsay but with a shitty palate.”

“Gin-san, stop mentioning random people in this fanfic like it’s nothing. The Gordon stans will hate us.” Shinpachi mumbled nervously.

As if on cue, a resounding _thwack_! happens as Gintoki's wooden _bokken,_ Lake Touya, was brought down upon the perm head, slamming him on the surface of the kotatsu facefirst. Shinpachi and Kagura both look up just in time to see Hijikata’s murderous gaze and his arm holding the _bokken_ threateningly over Gintoki’s body.

“What did you say I was again?” He snarled angrily.

“A-a-a-an angel. A good boyfriend,” Gintoki stuttered, lifting his head up to reveal blood gushing out from his forehead. “You are most definitely not Gordon Ramsay with a shitty palate….”

“It’s Toshi! Toshi’s here!” Kagura cheered, totally oblivious to the fact that her own guardian almost had his brains bashed in and the insides would probably mix in with her food.

“Hijikata-san?! How did you manage to get in?” Shinpachi squeaked in terror.

“Who, me? I let myself in because I know my Slander My Boyfriend Radar just went off, and I know this useless sack right here—” Hijikata pokes a lifeless Gintoki on the table— “just shit talked behind my back.”

“What the hell is Slander My Boyfriend Radar?”

“Anyways,” Hijikata said, promptly ignoring Shinpachi’s question. Throwing Lake Touya aside, he continued, “we're cleaning up the house. Tomorrow’s the Christmas dinner, yeah? Kondo and Sougo the Brat will come visit us.”

“Why is Chihuahua coming? I hate him,” Kagura grimaced. “Why is he always invited to the dinner anyways? All he’s ever done is make me mad and want to bash his head in the dirt where he belongs.”

“Sougo is part of the family. I can't let him risk destroying my future wedding just because his pettiness over not getting to eat roast beef during Christmas will bite me in the ass,” Hijikata slipped a cigarette past his lips, before dragging his boyfriend by the scruff of his neck. “Now come along you lazy turds! We have to buy some gifts too.”

Shinpachi groaned at Kagura’s cheers and what was about to come.

  
  


\---

The rules of the gift exchange was simple:

Fuck your gift up.

No, dear reader, you did not misread that. That’s...that’s literally it. That’s the whole point of the gift exchange that happens _every single year_ in the Yorozuya household. It’s something that Gintoki had looked forward to since their plans for a wedding began to solidify

The origins of the bad gifts were unclear, because they’d always felt like the tradition was something they’ve been doing naturally. Gintoki’s best guess was that it all began with Kagura and Sougo with their usual hostilities with each other, where they just act like the bigger jerk. How Hijikata had been roped into the shenanigan was beyond them, though it was probably because he had gone soft around the Yorozuya and started to be engulfed in their crazy antics.

They’d just finished cleaning and decorating (Hijikata was a terrifying mother-in-training. As soon as Kagura told him they had no more Christmas decorations, he started searching the house like crazy and returned with cobwebs in his hair and a box of decor that looked like it didn’t know whether it wanted to be a Halloween decoration or not), they headed straight to the malls to try and find something that might make the receiver cringe upon seeing their gift.

“Hey, Hijikata-kun! Do you think the person who picked Kondo would give him used panties?” Gintoki asked, eyeing the googly eyed voodoo dolls that Hijikata had been surveying to gift for Kagura.

“No, I’m not sure. Maybe Otae’s panties will make his sanity burst into a million pieces.”

“He’s still bugging Otae? Damn.” Gintoki clicked his tongue. Shinpachi had already issued five restraining orders in the past year, and all it ever did was make Kondo more desperate for skin to skin contact. Two months ago, Kondo had tried catfishing Otae in a dating website by posing as some famous host in a host club. It backfired, predictably, because Otae wasn’t a fool like Zura, for example, who really believed in Kondo and went on a date with him crossdressing as Zurako. Fortunately, he’d grown somewhat respectful of the boundary, as Hijikata’s gifts were becoming more and more telling that if Kondo blew this up, he’d be excluded from anything related to the Yorozuya or Shinpachi forever.

“Maybe you shouldn’t give Kagura occult dolls, Hijikata-kun,” Gintoki suggested, fiddling with the creepy things. Their eyes moved every time he touched them. He backed away in disgust. Even after so many years, horror themed objects seemed to scare him a bit more each day. “You should just give her a paper bag full of Sadaharu’s shit so her duties as a dog owner will be a literal reminder for her.” 

Hijikata rolled his eyes. “ _You should be given dog shit for being a shitty person in general!”_

Gintoki smirked, grabbing at Hijikata’s sleeves and wiggling his eyebrows. “But I’m your shitty person, Hijikata-kun.”

“Absolutely disgusting." The police officer replies with a laugh, playfully prying his hands away. “Aren’t you glad I’m not the one who picked your name this year, or I really would have just left you with dog shit.”

“You gave me bath towels 2 years ago, when you still kinda hated me.”

“Because you fucking stink. A towel is a wake up call to action,” Hijikata deadpanned.

“Touché.”

Shinpachi pokes his head inside the occult store with the most bored expression in his face.

“If you two are done hate-flirting each other,” he said, jamming a thumb to the exit sign placed on top of the double doors. “Let’s go get some KFC or I’ll die of starvation and adult neglect.”

  
  


\---

“My, my! Haven’t been here in awhile!” An enthusiastic Kondo cackled, ducking just in time as Kagura used her own body as a kicking projectile to attack Sougo upon his arrival. The two teens clashed into the railing of the Yorozuya porch, already throwing fists at each other’s faces. Shinpachi doesn’t even bother reprimanding the two and simply closes the door. “It’s so festive! I wonder if that festivity makes up for the shitty gift you’re about to be giving me.”

“Don’t worry, Kondo-san. You’re a shitty person to begin with. We expect nothing less from you,” Shinpachi replied, the snark evident in his voice.

“Did you say something, Shinpachi-kun?”

“I said your sweater looks lovely, Kondo-san!”

  
  


“So glad you could make it Kondo-san… Sougo,” Hijikata greeted, nodding in acknowledgement as the door to the genkan reopened to reveal the two battered teens. Sougo is currently sporting a bad bruise on his left eye. Kagura, on the other hand, looks like she let a makeup artist for a zombie set film do her face.

“Well if it isn’t Hijikata-san, you’re as lively as always,” Sougo shoots him a fake saccharine smile that stretched across his face like a wound. Hijikata cringed at his appearance “I see last year’s gift hasn’t repelled your emotions after all.”

“Shut your trap, Sougo. I know that mayonnaise was laced with _something_ from first glance.”

“Don’t bother, Souichirou-kun. He’ll never say he was tempted to eat all of that poisoned gift you gave him,” Gintoki cupped his hands over his mouth and was promptly elbowed in the gut afterwards.

“Like you’re one to talk. Shinpachi’s gift last year was actually pretty clever,” Hijikata said with a smirk. “Didn’t he cover up a Nietzsche Philosophy book with a porn magazine cover page so you thought it was a whole photo book full of nudes?” 

“Will you _stop bringing that up already_? I learned my lesson after, alright?” Gintoki exclaimed. Hijikata catches Shinpachi’s hand for a quick high-five.

They all moved towards the kitchen after Kagura started wailing about food before finally getting settled, properly ooh-ing and aah-ing over the dishes Shinpachi had presented to them. Dinner hasn’t always been a mellow affair because of Kagura and Sougo, passive aggressively commenting at each other while “accidentally” flinging soup at a random direction. Hijikata finds the whole thing endearing for some reason.

“Here, Hijikata-kun, say ah~n,” Gintoki said, shoving a spoonful of rice into his mouth.

“I’m not a kid you can spoon feed,” he mumbled, though he was hiding the fact that he was extremely pleased and let Gintoki place the food in his mouth. To be spoiled like this by Gintoki was rare, and he might be joking when he does it sometimes. The satisfied look on the perm head’s face says enough about the situation. 

“Would you like me to feed you some more?” Gintoki asked.

“N-no thanks, I’m good,” Hijikata stuttered, ducking his head down to hide the growing blush in his cheeks.

“Oh? You guys have become more casual with each other since I last saw you,” Kondo cackles in amusement. He makes a sign with his thumb and forefinger formed into a circle, while his other forefinger moves in and out of the whole. “Are you guys doing it yet?”

“KONDO-SAN?!” Shinpachi screeched indignantly, his cherry boy ears now defiled by such a corrupt question. “Can you please stop doing that sign, it’s disgusting.”

“Of course they’d been fucking, Kondo-san.” Sougo chimes in, much to the chagrin of not only Shinpachi but Hijikata. His usual fake smile directed itself towards the older male with spite. “You never were open with your sexual life, so people would often make mistakes when they assume something.”

“Oi, Souichirou-kun, isn’t that rude? We’ve done _this_ and _that_ for quite awhile. Don’t underestimate adults,” Gintoki shook his head.

“It’s Sougo, “ the younger male replied, not missing a beat. “If you meant by _this_ and _that_ as going on a trampoline park on Valentine’s day and then complaining because you guys were jumping around so much that your leg hurts, fuck you and you’re stupidly cute relationship.”

“Too naïve! You’ve let your guard down, Chihuahua!” Kagura hissed, taking the ladle from the hotpot before flinging a whole column of soup down Sougo’s crotch.

Three things happen all at once.

One, Sougo shrieked, his hands flying towards the contents of the table and almost toppled the rest of the meals over their respective crotches as well. Two, Kondo and Hijikata had to lean away in disgust as Gintoki snorted water up his nose from laughing too much and sprayed it all over the table.

Three, Shinpachi merely pops an Advil he had been secretly hiding in his pocket and wonders when it’ll all end so he could go to sleep.

\---

Everybody glared at each other as they presented their gifts.

"Remember, you punch someone _after_ the gift exchange happens," Shinpachi warned, glaring at Kagura and Sougo who had been asked to sit somewhere far. "Alright then, I go first with my gift for Kondo-san."

"God, I hate this part," Kondo whined, still managing to mutter his 'thank-you's' before unwrapping his present. He breathed a sigh of relief when Shinpachi's gift was simply a laminated version of the restraining order for that year. He shot an annoyed Shinpachi a watery smile before hugging the thing close to his chest. "I'll treasure this forever."

"Eww."

"Okay, I go next!" Gintoki says, tossing Hijikata his gift. "Here's my bad gift for you, Mayora. Hint: it's definitely not mayonnaise related."

"If I see a dead animal in here I'll kick you out of your own house and shove a sword up your ass." Hijikata replied, going through the poorly wrapped excuse of a gift and made a noise of confusion when he pulled out a ketchup bottle.

He shook the contents, wondering why the gift was so tame compared to previous years. When he flicks the bottle cap open, his dawning realization came in the form if his hairs standing on end and a horrified face as he realized that his favorite condiment got squeezed inside a fucking _ketchup_ bottle of all things.

"Oi," he says, voice low and filled with barely suppressed rage. This _sacrilege_ , the audacity of the gift, the offensive _nature of it-_ "This better not be what I think it is, sugar freak."

"It is exactly what you think it is," Gintoki nodded, the smugness oozing from his voice.

Hijikata punched the living daylights out of him without hesitation.

Gintoki remained unconscious for the rest of the exchange.

\---

"Oi, Hijikata-kun, what're you doing out here still smoking in the porch?" Gintoki called out, leaning in the entrance of the _genkan_ and watching Hijikata take a drag of his cigarette, staring pensively in the dark.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing," Hijikata hummed distractedly, stubbing his cigarette in his pouch, Gintoki saunters over to where he is and leaned into his shoulder, breathing in the sharp wintry air that would soon permeate the entirety of Edo. 

"Nothing, he says. Are you still hung up on the ketchup thing from earlier?"

"Don't remind me. I _hated_ having to scoop it to a proper jar. It felt like a massacre."

"That punch still hurts like a bitch," Gintoki whined, rubbing the side of his stomach where Hijikata's fist landed. "Still as strong as ever even in your old age."

"We are _literally_ the same age, moro.," Hijikata shook his head.

They lean into each other more steadily, the warmth oozing from one another making Gintoki extremely drowsy. Still, he endures and pulls back enough to fish something from inside his _yukata_ to give a hastily wrapped present to Hijikata, who looks surprised at the sight of it.

"I, err, I actually... I'm bad at gifts but I did get you a serious one so...." He weakly pushes the gift at Hijikata's direction, wondering if the other man could spot the redness of his cheeks in the dark. Hijikata takes the gift gingerly, admiring it as he moved it around his fingers. There's an unreadable expression in his face as he surveys the content by shaking it lightly, before giving Gintoki an amused glance.

"This better not be a ticking time bomb."

"Moron, why would I ever give you a bomb? We're getting married soon, you know. Can't have my husband blown to pieces."

"Perfectly morbid, I like it," Hijikata laughs, slowly unwrapping the paper. It was agonizingly slow and careful, and Gintoki's heart was hammering loudly in his chest as Hijikata finally got through the first layer of tissue and the next, unveiling every part of the wrapper until he was left with a beautifully knitted scarf the color of his eyes.

The soft gasp was enough to make Gintoki melt. "Did you... did you make this?"

"Secretly. Shinpachi taught me how to do the knitting. It was super tedious trying to hide it from you!" Gintoki laughed aloud. He hadn't even realized his hands were shaking from anticipating Hijikata's reaction. He remembered the many times throughout the night that he would work on it secretly, the times when he had to hide the scarf underneath the couch when Hijikata makes an unexpected visit, the times when Gintoki knits and sees an ocean of gun metal blue and falls in love all over again for a man he would dedicate his whole life to. He takes the scarf from Hijikata's hands and wraps it around his neck, finding it perfectly matches with Hijikata's eyes and making the color pop even if the low lighting from the street lampposts was all he could afford at the moment,

"You look so pretty like that," he breathed out.

Hijikata snorted, though the redness in his cheeks gave him away. He thumbs through the scarf before finally cupping his hands to Gintoki's face and giving him the proper kiss he had waited all evening. 

"Thank you, I love it," he says afterwards, before clearing his throat and snickering. "At least it wasn't towels this time, am I right?"

Gintoki bursted out into melodious laughter, and Hijikata felt he had just won a prize. 


End file.
